In 2017, natural disasters and weather-related events proved to be a considerable source of disruption across the globe and especially the United States, which for the first time became the most impacted region in the world. In addition to natural disasters, factory fires remain a significant risk to supply chains, and cyber-attacks increased substantially in 2017.

The annual report is a study of the prior year's supply chain disruption events: natural disasters, extreme weather, fires, environmental hazards, geopolitical occurrences, and other business developments. These events are tracked and their impact upon manufacturing supply chains assessed by the Resilinc technology and expert teams. The Resilinc EventWatch® service provides 24x7 alerting and notifications to subscribers tracking their exposure. Hundreds of millions of news alerts across over 100,000 sources in 44 languages were monitored and analyzed in 2017 alone.

"This should be a wake-up call for business leaders around the globe," states Bindiya Vakil, CEO of Resilinc. "2017 was a turbulent year for US companies and their supply chains, causing a hidden drag that must be addressed. With 32% of S&P 500 companies potentially impacted, the economic damage is enormous." Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria alone contributed to significant impacts to business in 2017, finds the report.

In 2017, Resilinc EventWatch contacted more than 19,000 unique suppliers for potential impacts, which generated responses from 53% of those suppliers contacted. "When an event occurs, action must be taken by all members of the supply chain, to ensure that appropriate steps are taken to avoid any potential impacts. The faster and more efficiently these steps are taken, the less the overall economic consequences," said Shahzaib Khan, Director of EventWatch at Resilinc.

The annual report analyzed incidents by risk type, industry, geography, disruption potential, and month for 2016 and 2017 for comparison purposes by industry and geography. The report highlights global supply chain risk trends through a variety of lenses and aids supply chain planning for 2018 and beyond.

Key report highlights include:

The top 5 events of 2017 in terms of impact to businesses were:

Late winter storm in the Northeast USA, March

Weather related damage closed the US/Mexico Laredo border, May

Hurricane Harvey in USA, August

Hurricane Irma in USA, September

Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, September

For the first time, North America was the most disrupted region by natural disasters.

Factory fire/explosion represented the majority of EventWatch bulletins in 2017 with 18% of bulletins notified.

About Resilinc
Resilinc is the leading global supplier of supply chain risk and resiliency solutions. Industry leading companies such as IBM, General Motors, EMC, Amgen and Western Digital rely on Resilinc to plan for potential supply chain failures, and to protect revenue despite supply chain disruptions worldwide. For more information about our solutions, please visit www.resilinc.com.

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Source: Resilinc via Globenewswire